Featured Designer: Carri Perani of Iridescence Jewelry

I have been so excited to share this with you guys for ages.  OK, intro: my Aunt Kathy and Uncle Randy stalk garage sales, vintage stores, and estate sales for random treasures, and the stuff that they manage to pick up is kind of amazing.  I really need to make a weekend visit just to join them on scavenger hunts, and they will be the masters and I shall be the pupil.  Which reminds of that time when I was like 6 and was dead-set on ditching my family and just living with Kathy and Randy, even though Uncle Randy tickled me so much I think I stopped breathing long enough to do brain damage, and Aunt Kathy was kind of sarcastic, but I could totally tell she was cool with me and that made me feel very urbane.  Anyways, during a scavenging adventure, they found a jeweler that Aunt Kathy told me about, and I want to share with you.  


Carri Perani began Iridescence Jewelry in West Virginia at the end of 2007, making the transition from a job in a corporate office.  Though she has not had any formal art training in jewelry design, she learns techniques from local goldsmith, Gene Conley of Touchstone Designs, in something akin to an apprenticeship.  Carri tells me that she is currently studying silversmithing with Gene.  (And I just need to break off for a moment to say that it makes me really happy to know that there are still apprenticeships.  Apprenticing needs to come back in a big way.)    


She generally works with sterling and 14k gold, but she also has a line of jewelry called the Rabbit Hole Collection which is what got me so fanatical about her jewelry that I bought two pieces right away.  Carri said, "The Rabbit Hole Collection is about recycling/repurposing & using what's already available. I've traveled all over the continental US, to Hawaii, New Zealand, and to several islands in the Caribbean.  Traveling is so inspiring to me because it makes me realize just how much beauty there is in the world."  She actually named her jewelry line during a walk on the beach in St. Augustine, Florida, inspired by the beauty of thin iridescent shells.  She collaborates with close friend, Cara, who started a buy, sell, trade clothing company called Journe Wear in Steubenville, Ohio.  Together they shop thrift stores, flea markets, garage sales & buy odds and ends from people like Aunt Kathy & Uncle Randy.  


The Rabbit Hole Collection

Gold Scalloped Earrings

"I think the beauty of these pieces is that it is open to interpretation, you can write & rewrite their story because every piece has it's own long lost history. You look at a piece and wonder, who did this belong to? where has this been? It all has so much character & mystery attached to it. That's what I think really draws people to it. I also think people find the rabbit hole collection intriguing because we are using found objects in very creative, unthought of ways," Carri says.

Soaring Swallow

Vintage Teapot Necklace

The Steam Punk Collection

"Steampunk places great importance on the value of beauty that reflects unusual or antiquated ideals. The steampunk culture takes its cues from the Victorian era, and speculates on how our world would be different if steam power had become the driving force behind our culture."

Pride & Prejudice, Zombies, Doppelgangers, Morbid Jewelry

Señorita Skeleton

These adorable earrings by Lyda82 [$13.95] I find sweetly morbid and weirdly charming which are qualities I find pretty fabulous. The style of the demure cameo with the profile of a skeleton also reminds me of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies's cover art.  I have never read the book and would very possibly hate it, but I love the idea of it.  One of those things that is perhaps better in your imagination than in the realization...like cheesecake or parades.  Jane Austen and zombie movies are two things over which many girlfriends and I have bonded.  P & P & Z may possibly incite rage over Austen abuse if I were to actually read it since Pride and Prejudice is a part of sacred girlhood memory because I first read it around age 12 or so and reread it about ten more times. It is stored up there in the vault with the entire Anne of Green Gables series. I know I speak for a surprisingly large number of women my age when I say, do not mess with Austen. That message is mostly at you, Kiera Knightly. I thought you were actually kind of good in those random bits of Doctor Zhivago I watched that one weekend I was surfing around PBS whilst  ill with something or other, and you were entertaining and pretty in the first Pirates of the Caribbean until Disney made you the skinny, pointy Amazon queen of the pirate horde who suddenly and unaccountably could swashbuckle competitively with 18th century CAREER soldiers and bloodthirsty BRIGANDS, seemingly for the sole purpose of emasculating your already girly boyfriend.  So it’s not like period pieces don’t work for you, but, my gosh, your gaunt, hungry cheekbones and peevishly gaping mouthful of too many teeth did not work as Elizabeth Bennett. My apologies to K.K., that was probably meaner than necessary but, at the same time I feel like she deserves it. Pride and Prejudice was already done fabulously well by A&E and if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.  By the way, during my internet jaunt for this post, I see that a movie version of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is slated for 2011 starring Natalie Portman which gives me pause that maybe I do want to read it.  If Natalie Portman is in a movie, I am much more tempted to watch it, because I think I am a little enamored of her.  This is partly because I suspect she is a mythical creature, like maybe an elf or a nymph, since she is timelessly elegant and evidently does not age at all. She was in movies like Heat a hundred years ago, and still looks like she’s only 21. Natalie Portman lends an air of refined legitimacy and Art With a Capital-A to her films.  Which is funny since K.K. is Natalie Portman’s doppelgänger and she has the exact opposite affect on me.  Natalie Portman makes me think that a film project is perhaps more elegant and intelligent than I at first thought, and K.K. in a cast makes me think the movie will be dippier and more clichéd, which I guess fulfills the role of doppelgänger pretty accurately. Huh, it would be weird if K.K.Dg.’s attempt at a legit version of P & P bombed and Natalie’s version of P & P & Z portraying the same beloved character as a Zombie Warrior Princess turns out to be great.  I may have to read the book, and watch the movie.  Whilst wearing these earrings.  



Amazon

 P.S. In spite of the fact that the subtitle of P & P & Z includes the word Ultraviolent (Clockwork Orange reference alert!) a few poignant reviews deflated my enthusiastism to read it.  [Apparently, zombie-killer Elizabeth Bennett is into moral relativism regarding the slaughter of a few innocents to save The Masses and kinda into kinky but self-loathing masochism which is obviously an unforgivable affront to the paragon of wit, grace, and wisdom in the original.  I will probably still see the movie though.  Whilst wearing these earrings.  Said earrings probably fulfilling my blend of Austen and zombies much better than the story.]